one of the worst things about compiled languages is that there’s no REPL. if you want to build an intuition for any feature of the language or any unfamiliar API you have to hand-write and trial-and-error some simple example code that you then compile and run multiple times. and there might not even be a pretty-printer built into the language

Rust, as much as I hated using it, is actually somehow able to have an unofficial REPL? I have no idea how that’s possible but it was actually very very helpful when I was trying to learn the language

I also really don’t like compiled languages just because they seem much more pragmatic and utilitarian than scripting languages. I would love to learn a compiled language with the same minimalist philosophy as Lua or Fennel but instead it seems like there are maximalist languages (or at least languages crammed with strange legacy behavior) like C, C++, C#, and Java

wait I’ve been reading about Zig and on first glance it actually looks like exactly what I’d want?